Lies and Deceit Litter Road to War by Bob Hawke The Australian 8:17pm 19th Mar, 2003   March 19, 2003    AS the only prime minister to commit Australian military forces to war since Vietnam, my name has been invoked by several people – including John Howard – in the debate about Australia's alignment with President George W. Bush's intention to bombard and invade Iraq. It is appropriate that I should make my position absolutely clear on this issue.    Let me first state the obvious. That decision, in 1991, provides no support whatever for the Prime Minister's lock-step performance with Bush and Tony Blair at this time. Then, we had the unprovoked invasion of another sovereign independent state by Iraq. We had a binding Security Council resolution authorising military action to repel Iraqi forces. We had, under that authority, the assembly by then president George H. W. Bush of a coalition of 32 nations, including significant Arab states, to give effect to that resolution. None of those conditions apply today.    Two primary, related, objectives and justifications have been advanced by the proponents for war: the location and destruction of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq so that they cannot be used by Saddam Hussein or be made available to international terrorist organisations.    Those objectives are valid. They provide a justification for war, however, only if it has been conclusively demonstrated that there is no other, peaceful, way to achieve them. Bush's statement yesterday that "every measure has been taken to avert war" is simply not true. Nor is it true to say, as he did, that "the UN Security Council has not lived up to its responsibilities".    There is another possible way to achieve these objectives and the Security Council has not yet been given the opportunity to consider and implement such a proposal – which does not involve simply an extension of terms for the existing inspection regime.    The Security Council should be asked to pass a resolution that would increase the number of inspectors, augmented by the presence of a significant UN force. This force would have the responsibility to monitor access to any WMD identified and to have a formalised watching brief on the activities of Iraqi military and political authorities whose decisions are relevant to the use or disposition of WMDs. Both the inspectors and this UN force would be required to report regularly to the Security Council on progress in identifying weapons and in containing any possibility of their use or disposition before their destruction.    An essential element of the Bush-Blair-Howard argument has been that this war is essential to the successful fight against the threat of international terrorism. The argument is fallacious on a number of grounds. First, any link between the secular Iraqi regime and the fundamentalist al-Qa'ida is tenuous at best and has been low-keyed by no less a figure than CIA director George Tenet. Second, and much more important, Bush is profoundly wrong in his assertion yesterday that "the terrorist threat will be diminished the moment Saddam Hussein is disarmed".    The proposition defies logic and the assessment of many in our own intelligence community and that of our allies. It assumes that without Iraq other sources of WMDs are not readily available. It assumes that the massive bombardment of Iraq and the inevitable deaths of innocent Iraqi men, women and children dominating television screens around the world will not intensify the hatred of terrorist organisations for the US, and those who support it, and concentrate their intention to wreak the utmost damage wherever they can.    These grotesque pictures will create a more sympathetic ambience for the agents of terror. Osama bin Laden must be on his knees every day and night praying to Allah that such manna will be delivered. It needs little understanding of military strategy to know that it makes no sense to act exactly as your enemy would most desire.    These considerations, among others, no doubt account for a unique aspect of the situation. Never before in our history has a government going to war been confronted by such a formidable array of trenchant opposition from people with the highest qualifications in the military and intelligence communities.    My military leaders during the Gulf War were General Peter Gration (Army and chief of the Australian Defence Forces), Ray Funnell (air force) and Admiral Mike Hudson (navy). After Howard's address last week, they each repudiated his position. Gration: "My fundamental judgment that it's wrong remains." Funnell: "It's strategic stupidity on a monumental scale." Hudson: "It's almost immoral."    These are the views of men whose whole professional life has been devoted to the security of Australia. And these are views that are held within the professional intelligence and military community today.    We have not only the publicly expressed judgment of Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Wilkie who, in resigning from the Office of National Assessment, said: "Iraq does not pose a security threat to the US, the UK, Australia or any other country at this present time. Their military is very small, the weapons of mass destruction program is fragmented and contained, and there is no hard evidence of any active co-operation between Iraq and al-Qa'ida."    No Australian academic has closer contact with, and knowledge of, our intelligence and defence communities than Des Ball of the Australian National University's Strategic Studies Centre. In commenting on Wilkie's resignation and statements, Ball said there was "an enormous amount of opposition to the Government's policy throughout the intelligence services" and that there "was also a high level of concern and anger within the armed forces". He said that a naval commander had recently consulted him about whether he should "burn his uniform in protest".    I repeat, these past and present judgments come from highly qualified people whose total concern and responsibility is the security of the nation. Their judgment confirms the fundamental fallacy in the Prime Minister's opening gambit to parliament yesterday that he was taking us to war because of Iraq's "potential to threaten Australia's security". They also underline the obscenity of his earlier invocation of the Bali victims as a justification for going to war.    The simple truth is that terrorist threats to Australians at home and abroad have been significantly increased by putting up our name in neon lights alongside the US and the UK in this act of war. Let me make this point quite clear. No prime minister should shrink from making a decision that could entail possible danger for the nation and its citizens if that decision is intrinsically the right one.    The disclosed judgments of intelligence and military professionals that this act of war is prejudicial to Australia's security confirms the clear majority view of the Australian people that this is not the right decision. In making it, the Prime Minister and his Government are acting in a way that is profoundly and dangerously against the national interest.    I now turn to other arguments advanced by the triumvirate for war. While Howard said that "regime change" would not of itself persuade him to be part of this attack on Iraq, all three leaders have nevertheless spent considerable time dwelling on the evil nature of Hussein and the sufferings of the Iraqi people. And in bestriding the moral platform with Bush and Blair, he said we should, in this respect, have regard for Iraq's long history.    Hussein is, without question, an evil man with an evil history. But the moral armour would fit more comfortably if the President and British Prime Minister were to recognise the complicity of their countries in that evil history. The CIA conspired with Ba'athists, including Hussein in exile in Cairo, in the overthrow of the Kassem regime in 1963 because it had become too close to the Soviet Union and had legalised the Iraq Communist Party.    After Hussein assumed power, British and US companies (also French and German), with the support of their governments, were among those who provided the evil regime with armaments, including the basis for its development of WMDs. In 1975, a US company, Pfaulder Corporation of Rochester, New York, supplied the regime with the blueprint that enabled the Iraqis to build their first chemical warfare plant. British company Matrix Churchill was a significant agent in assisting the regime to develop chemical and biological weapons and nuclear reactors.    These facts do not mean that the world should not now seek the destruction, under UN authority, of these WMDs. But I do wish that when Bush and Blair solemnly parade the evils of Hussein using WMDs against the Iranians and his own people they would at least acknowledge the complicity of their countries in enabling that to happen and their responsibility for any existing weaponry.    I make two final points. First, the triumvirate argues that it has legal justification for going to war on the basis of resolutions 678 and 687 from the Gulf War period and 1441 of last year. This view is strongly disputed by a range of professional legal opinion including, for instance, Donald R. Rothwell, teacher in international law at the University of Sydney: "Without a fresh UN Security Council resol ution clearly authorising the use of force, any country that seeks to intervene militarily in Iraq will be in violation of international law."    The legal experts may differ, but the inescapable moral point is this. These resolutions were made at other times and in other circumstances. The Security Council is there now and just a few days ago Bush, rightly, said that the hands should be shown. It is the Security Council decision, now, that is relevant.    Finally, do not forget that the conservative parties in Australia have a track record in these matters. They took us into Vietnam in unqualified and unjustified support of another exercise in US adventurism.    Australia's security at home and our standing in the region is infinitely more at risk now than with that lock-step with the US in Vietnam. When will they ever learn?    Bob Hawke was prime minister of Australia from 1983 to 1991. Visit the related web page
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